


Unfeigned Heart

by rosegoldgilded



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: M/M, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-20
Updated: 2019-07-20
Packaged: 2020-07-08 23:46:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19878076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosegoldgilded/pseuds/rosegoldgilded
Summary: Yes, that night Aziraphale discovered the love of humans. And he spent the next thousands of years discovering all the new and exciting ways they reimagined that love.Human creation was nothing but an act of love.





	Unfeigned Heart

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from the song to be with you by the honey trees

It’s true that Aziraphale goes at his own pace—one that some would, perhaps not totally inaccurately, describe as “slow”. But once he’s dipped his toes into whatever proverbial pool he takes an interest in, he can’t seem to help himself from falling headlong into cool, comforting waters.

It began with food. He can, even now, some six thousand years later, remember his first bite. It had been a few hundred years after Adam and Eve had passed on. Aziraphale was watching over a small village of their descendents. (Perhaps they were his favorite branch of the original brood. But angels weren’t supposed to pick favorites, so he didn’t _._ He _didn’t._ ) He had been trying to appear casual, strolling on the outskirts of the cluster of primitive houses, keeping one weary eye on the horizon; always, in those early days, with a healthy fear of the elements and what they could do to vulnerable humans. A small child had approached him. It had surprised him at first, as, for the most part, the humans stayed away from him. They could sense his otherness, he supposed. He did not mind. He _was_ Other, after all. His job was to watch over them, not join them. And yet, there had been no fear in those bright, dark eyes as they had asked him to join their family for dinner. He remembers as they took his hand in their much smaller, much softer one and led him to their home. The house had been modest—roughly constructed clay and mud and straw, with a heavy woolen mantle covering the singular door.

Modest, yes, but it had been warm. Not in the sense that heat is warm. Aziraphale would come to know another type of warmth that day. One that is bred from a home in which people gather and are happy. One that is found in the sharing of a breadbasket woven from dried grass, passed between smiling faces. One that is found in the first curious bite of skewered beef and vegetables, in which Aziraphale could taste not only all the flavors of real sustenance for the very first time, but also the care and effort that went into its creation. In the rustic loaves of bread, he could taste the worry that knotted the brows of the person who kneaded the dough as she thought of her children and their future. In the vegetables, he could taste the attention of the watchful farmer, his dedication to the land and his family.

With that very first bite of human food, Aziraphale came to know love in an entirely different sense than Heaven had taught him. Heaven’s love was absolute, yes, but sterile. All-encompassing, but as generic as its endless expanse of white walls. The love he had discovered in that small hut, brought to him by the kindness of humans, was as colorful as the Earth that had been its birthplace. Many hues and many shades and all of them warm and inviting. Created not by God, but by God’s creations themselves.

Yes, that night Aziraphale discovered the love of humans. And he spent the next thousands of years discovering all the new and exciting ways they reimagined that love.

Human creation was nothing but an act of love.

His second discovery of this was in literature. Almost as soon as humanity invented the means of writing, they had begun to record the stories they had previously passed from hearth to hearth. Before, their voices breathed life into them, and suffocated them in the silence that followed. Aziraphale had spent many nights at these hearths, listening to tale after tale, sipping homebrewed ale and savoring whatever morsels were offered him. He adored the stories he heard—the sad ones, the romantic ones, the ones with tragic endings, but most of all, the ones full of hope. And when the means came along to collect all these stories, to revisit when he was on his own and going at his own pace to really relish every detail, he was ecstatic.

Once again, with their own creation, humans had found away to keep something precious alive.

His entire existence on Earth had been a string of delightful discovery followed by years of intense appreciation. The things that the humans created were, for the most part, indescribably wonderful. Their art, their food, their clothes, and their music; Aziraphale loved it all. And he did his best to thoroughly enjoy it all—even if it occasionally put him “behind the times”, as some would say. But he couldn’t help it. As the years went on, the humans became faster and faster at creating, and Aziraphale simply couldn’t keep up. But that was okay. He would live long into the future, he hoped, after the apocalypse-that-wasn’t, and he had time.

Speaking of thoroughly enjoying things and taking his time, Aziraphale looked up from where he was currently hunched over his desk to his threadbare couch where a certain demon was sprawled out, snoring softly in his sleep. Aziraphale gazed at him for a moment, chuckling to himself at the image of spindly limbs clad in black leather, hanging askew and limp and peaceful.

It was no wonder Crowley was exhausted. They had spent a tense few weeks after their failed executions on high alert, wondering if their respective offices would catch onto their ruse. Crowley especially seemed intent on glowering into every shadow, peering around every corner, putting himself between the angel and whatever happened to cross their path.

And that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? Almost as soon as Aziraphale had given away his sword in the Garden, Crowley had been acting in its stead—a near constant at his side and always ready to lend a helping hand.

Aziraphale’s smile softened at the thought of the demon. It took quite the imagination, he thought to himself, to envision a world where an angel and a demon could work together when he first proposed the Arrangement—let alone to envision a world in which the two could be friends. And still, it was something Crowley had been building up with his own hands all these years.

_Alone_ , Aziraphale thought with a shred of shame. His own desire to take things in slowly, coupled with his fear of breaking the rules, had made Aziraphale a reluctant participant in what Crowley had been trying to create for millennia. Of course, he had done his best to appease both his sense of self-preservation and his fondness for the demon over the course of their acquaintance, but he was beginning to feel that that was no longer quite enough. No, he thought again, that wasn’t it. He was ready to savor something new. He had been falling down this particular path of indulgence for so much longer than any other. It was time, he felt with a sudden clarity, to take the final plunge. To no longer just consume, but assist in the creation of his favorite part of humanity.

Aziraphale rose from his desk and approached the sleeping demon. As he looked down at the face he had come to know so well—better than he had known anything in all existence—he took a second to compose himself. Then, with a steady, sure hand, he combed his fingers through dark ruddy hair, finding himself wondering at how soft the short strands were. Crowley woke with a start, dark glasses coming askew as he jerked at the sudden sensation.

_Still on alert then,_ Aziraphale thought.

“Angel, what in the—” Crowley gasped, yellow ochre eyes wide with confusion, going wider still when he registered the warmth of the hand on his scalp. He looked to the angel for explanation.

A moment passed while Aziraphale gave Crowley a breath to fully come to consciousness, to realize there was no danger, and that the smile Aziraphale was now giving him was one of the secret ones he had done his best to conceal until now—one of the ones that revealed something raw and delicate and _human_ about himself.

_I’ve kept him waiting too long, I should think,_ the angel thought to himself. Then, aloud, with all the tenderness and reassurance he could muster, “My dear, I believe you and I have some things to discuss.”

**Author's Note:**

> Whew. This was my first fan fiction in several years. But I love the story of Crowley and Aziraphale and I love this fandom too much not to lovingly pick apart every single nuance and interpretation in it. lol A Crowley POV will hopefully be coming soon.


End file.
